


Living Stone

by WikdSushi



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Body Horror, Consort Bilbo Baggins, Creepy, Horror, M/M, Magic Hobbit(s), Not for the squeamish, Resurrection, Seriously fucked up, babies?, pod people, podpreg, post-BotFA, scary kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7596286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WikdSushi/pseuds/WikdSushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kingdom of Erebor is no longer what Kíli imagined or ever wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living Stone

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Seashadows for second reading, and not slowly inching away or calling my psychiatrist. :D

The two of them crouched behind a ragged tapestry, panting like the rustle of leaves in a cold wind. Fíli jerked to move at their uncle's voice, calling him, wind through a cavern and the slither of vines. Kíli caught his arm.

"I have to," Fíli whispered.

"Is it only him?"

"Or him and Mr. Dwalin. Not...."

"Fíli." Even from beyond the nursery, Thorin's voice echoed through them, booming and whispering and alive as his shadow, dreadful as his eyes, like cornflowers caught in milk-glass. Kíli longed for the strength to cut him down. 

Kíli flinched when Fíli threw back the tapestry. "Come on," Fíli said in his ear as he bustled him from their nook to the great stone crib. Fíli hurried alone to the door, to catch up with Thorin's terrible shadow. Kíli found himself staring after them as Fíli called, "Sorry, Thorin! We were looking in on the bairns."

At their mention, Kíli looked down. His breakfast rose at the three things jerking now, still again, one turning its head to gaze at its cousin, with closed eyes, all well nestled inside their translucent pea-pod, a great green thing pulsing with... with---

"Sweet little things."

Kíli fell still as stone beyond the Mountain as Bilbo, King Consort Bilbo Bungul, drew his fingers along the pea-pod, the leaves at their green tips lingering, his voice still rattling and hissing and rustling in Kíli's stone soul with the sound of all growing things bursting forth at once. Kíli dared not look to his eyes. None of them had been the same since the great battle, since Thorin's fall, since life and death grew thin around them. Since Bilbo cried out to the Valar to return his beloved. Since the....

Since....

Hobbit magic, Kíli thought. Fíli, whose hand he gripped in Mandos's presence, said such things could only be Morgoth. Perhaps both. Perhaps both.

"Mother will want to see them," he finally said, eyes averted to the crib's edge, engraved with Thorin's name from long ago, and Mother's as well.

"Her caravan is still coming."

"It has been three y--" Kíli bit his tongue too late, and looked to Bilbo's eyes for mercy. He found none. Nothing but the ebb and flow of life. Nothing but a golden ring cast in one, and a sphere of black more perfect than an empty mine in the other. He said once more, knowing he was damned the moment the Dwarven slain rose and with them the towering thorn-wall, "It's been three years. Have they even reached the...?" The wall that opened only when Bilbo wished it. The wall Kíli suspected had taken his mother's blood for its own.

Bilbo watched him. His cloak of leaves shushed as it grew, its tendrils curious, but Bilbo may as well have been the Mountain. Finally, he shrugged, the same self-deprecating shrug their Burglar of old gave when asked a question of thought.

"Give her time." Bilbo smirked and stroked his children, Thorin's children, creatures who might stem from Mordor once Bilbo's terrible empire grew southward. "Go spar with Thorin."

Kíli ran. All the way to the sparring-ground, tendrils tickled his hair, the corkscrew sprouts of young peas teased him, and if he knew his soul would not blow to vapor, oh, he would burn the lot to ash.


End file.
